[sQL_inject]

Hyperbolic drivel: : “The people sitting in that building (Google HQ in London) are probably having a pretty good time. They have lots of ping pong tables and Huel. But the cobalt that they’re using in their microchips is still often dug up by artisanal miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo, getting paid less than a couple of dollars a day.”

Like much of the oligarchic class, the boy-gods of Silicon Valley still cleave to Hobbesian myths to justify their grip on wealth and power. Their techno-Utopian convictions, encapsulated in Bill Gates’ mantra that “innovation is the real driver of progress,” are merely a secular iteration of the divine mandates that Goliaths once used to legitimize their rule. Promises of rewards in the afterlife have been supplanted by dreams of a technological singularity and interplanetary civilization."

- Google doesn't serve Huel - Google has maybe two total pong pong tables in the London office and staff here are some of the most diligent coworkers I know. - Google actively is working to, and has reduced, conflict cobalt from the supply chain. - No one I know in Silicon Valley "cleaves to Hobbesian myths" to "justify" their grip on anything. Everyone I know shows up to work to provide for their family, grow professionally, or self-actualize. - People who "dream of Singularity and interplanetary civilization" isn't a thing, no one dreams of this fantasy.

If the so called professional being cited here cannot avoid use hyperbolic drivel and unfounded fantasy to substantiate the claim, it's difficult to give credence to the case.

[Animats]

The US has a large cobalt mine in Idaho. It's closed.[1] They got all the way to startup, and then the price of cobalt dropped.[2] Peaked at $37, dropped to $10. Right now about $22, but that's a recent spike. Break-even for that mine is around $20.

Similar to the rare earths situation, which I've mentioned before.

This is why we have raw material shortages. The materials exist, but prices are too volatile for the capital required.

[1] https://jervoisglobal.com/projects/idaho-cobalt-operations/

[1] https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=co&u=...

[georgeecollins]

They used to mine rare Earths in California. It isn't scarcity so much as the economics of globalization.

[Animats]

The Mountain Pass mine is running again. There are deals with DoD and General Motors to establish a price floor, so they don't go bankrupt yet again when the price drops.

The current bottleneck in rare earths is separation. There are four steps - mining, beneficiation (mechanically sorting the good stuff from lots of unwanted rock, done at the mine), separation (sorting out the different rare earths chemically, can be done anywhere), and conversion to metals (smelting). The US doesn't have anywhere near enough separation capacity and Mountain Pass has been shipping ore after beneficiation to China for further processing. That's being fixed, but not fast enough.

Market price and availability swing wildly over about a 4:1 range, resulting in repeated gluts, shutdowns, and bankruptcies. Last big rare earth glut was in 2015, and most non-China production shut down.

[pinnochio]

You're quoting two different people here.

  - Google actively is working to, and has reduced, conflict cobalt from the supply chain.

That's good, but doesn't change the fact that the supply chain for tech exemplifies "the hub exploiting the periphery".

  - No one I know in Silicon Valley "cleaves to Hobbesian myths" to "justify" their grip on anything. Everyone I know shows up to work to provide for their family, grow professionally, or self-actualize.

"Like much of the oligarchic class, the boy-gods of Silicon Valley" is likely referring to the CEO/founder/VC class.

  - People who "dream of Singularity and interplanetary civilization" isn't a thing, no one dreams of this fantasy.

That's patently untrue. A bunch of them post here.

[charcircuit]

>tech exemplifies "the hub exploiting the periphery".

Two parties agreeing on a price for something is not exploitation. Both parties benefit from working together.

[GolfPopper]

And when one of the parties is a group of men with guns who abuse their neighbors in order to produce the something they're selling to the other party, it becomes exploitation in a quick hurry.

[kruffalon]

There is also the fact that an agreement under a power imbalance can be, and often is, exploitative.

[Mikhail_Edoshin]

Marx's use of the word "exploitation" is misunderstood. Exploitation is using another person as a thing. Exploit as one exploits natural resources.

[lotsofpulp]

That is a poor delineation of exploit.

I use any number of professionals’ knowledge or skills or supplies just the same as I use natural gas to heat the home or water to hydrate myself or clean whatever.

Maybe something about the seller (or buyer) being under duress would be a start to defining exploitation.

[helicone]

I dream of interplanetary civilization sometimes

[Terr_]

> Bill Gates’ mantra that “innovation is the real driver of progress,” are merely a secular iteration of the divine mandates that Goliaths once used to legitimize their rule.

I'd like to point that that mantra on its own can go in two wildly-different directions, depending on whether you believe "innovation" comes from:

1. An incremental process of millions of contributors doing small unsung pieces of work until eventually some threshold of opportunity, motive, preliminary ideas, and luck is reached which makes for a visible shift and simple story.

2. A magical threshold only broken through by Great Men, who were not lucky at all and deserve Great Wealth for their Greatness.

As you might guess, I subscribe to (1). Humans are wired to dislike randomness and broad causes, so we dramatically underestimate (and undervalue) all the people making innovations of higher-precision parts, or a chemical reaction that can use a cheaper reagent that's also waste from another process, or basic research like "these proteins are highly conserved in the virus."

[corimaith]

It's both. Individuals are also constrained by perverse incentivzes that sometimes you do need someone unconstrained from it all to make the critical push.

[xg15]

> No one I know in Silicon Valley "cleaves to Hobbesian myths" to "justify" their grip on anything.

Peter Thiel's "Antichrist" talks come pretty close...

[api]

Those were just odd, like “are you okay, man?” odd.

[dyauspitr]

I dream of those things as I believe a lot of others do on HN. I also provide for my family and achieve more in my career but those aren’t dreams, that’s just what I do everyday.

Dreams of the singularity and interplanetary civilizations are actually achievable at some point in the future. Random god king paychobabble isn’t.

I’m not for this Luddite bullshit and you’re severely harming any legitimate opposition to the billionaire class by undermining yourself.